Muted Songs
by williamsangel88
Summary: Death is but the next great adventure, but for one Harry Potter death on Earth only opened up a doorway to hell on Middle Earth. Will he ever find peace or would getting out of the caves take its toll?
1. Chapter 1

**Muted Songs**

**Summary:** Death is but the next great adventure, but for one Harry Potter death on Earth only opened up a doorway to hell on Middle Earth. Will he ever find peace or would getting out of the caves take its toll?

**Disclaimer:** As usual I own nothing concerning Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. I only use and abuse the character for my own twisted ideas.

**Warnings:** torture and abuse, death, SLASH for future reference.

_Cold is the water, it freezes your already cold mind  
>Already cold, cold mind<br>And death is at your doorstep and it will steal your innocence  
>But it will not steal your substance<em> – Timshel, Mumford and Sons

**Chapter 1  
>Darkness Around<strong>

Everything hurt. From the tips of his toes to the crown of his head. Even his hairs seemed to protest with each movement and he groaned pathetically. He had always imagined that death would be peaceful. Like Sirius had once told him in the Forbidden Forest when he had stood as a child of almost eighteen, willingly walking to his death. Maybe it had been something to sooth him, but he still remembered when the Killing Curse claimed his life. The peace he had felt at being relieved of the burden which was Tom Riddle - aka Voldemort - his soul.

It wasn't until he heard the whispers and screeching that Harry finally opened his eyes. There was darkness all around and he could hear a faint dripping in the distance of water splashing onto stone somewhere in the endless tunnels. Cold, hard rock pressed onto sore muscles, bruised and battered from his last fight against death which he had lost but also seemingly won. He was alive but no longer was he on the fields of Scotland's Highlands. He wasn't even sure if he was still in Britain for the earth felt different around him, cold and empty, its magics exhausted as if it had been cast aside in this forgotten labyrinth of tunnels.

"Now look what you did," Harry muttered to himself, his raspy voice echoing hollowly through the surrounding space around him. It sounded strange in his ears, foreign and old. Older than he had been before his death, yet younger than he remembered being. "Couldn't do anything properly in life, you had to be unique in death as well. Potter luck huh? Could have done without it for a while." And Harry willed his limbs to work for him once more. He didn't get far, barely halfway upright, when he heard a sound different from his own harsh breaths and the dripping of water against stone. It was a clicking and scratching which echoed around the tunnels in a way no human could ever hope to sound.

Harry turned, his green gaze searching the surrounding dark, slowly getting adjusted to the endless night. A soft hissing, almost purring, sound echoed through the tunnels behind him and, narrowing his eyes in suspicion, Harry remained staring towards the tunnel for a few minutes/seconds to see if the sound would move away in any direction. It didn't, but it didn't disappear either so he relaxed his tense shoulders and focused his attention to where he was standing. The uneven rocky terrain was remarkably carved, rough like it had been man-made rather than letting nature run its course. The walls seemed to shine dimly with, what Harry presumed to be, water. Upon closer inspection, meaning shuffling carefully towards the stone walls as his muscles and bones protested against the movement, water wasn't the only thing which caused the stone to glow. It was like lines of pure silver which dripped from the cracks. No wonder there were rough hacks in the walls of the tunnels. Miners must have tried to collect it all, whatever the silvery stuff was.

While Harry didn't know a lot about mining, he knew from conversations he had once with a few Goblins that you could always hear anything in the mines, especially when they were active mines. Now the only thing which could be heard was his own harsh breaths and the odd purring sound that had yet to stop. In fact, it only seemed to grow louder. Whatever, or whoever, was making it was getting closer by the second.

Supporting himself by the wall, Harry carefully willed his legs forward to move towards the sound. It seemed an odd and foolhardy thing to do, but he had remained a Gryffindor throughout all these years. Lonesome or not, Harry was always in for an adventure. Even the unwilling ones he was dumped into when he younger. By the time that war ended he had all but screamed to the world that he didn't care for adventures anymore. He just wanted the quiet life of normalcy.

Which lasted for about a month after his eighteenth birthday when he signed up for his NEWT year at Hogwarts together with most of his year-mates who had failed to take their NEWTs during the height of the war. It had taken the entire summer for all the ruckus to die down and for Harry to find some calm in his life, only for it to be interrupted by rebellion after rebellion after endless rebellion. First it was the surviving werewolves who were being hunted down for their active part in the war. Than other magical creatures followed. The Ministry, which had been under a lot of scrutiny after the war and had been steadily rebuilding itself under the watchful eye of Kingsley Shacklebolt, was steadily being ripped apart again as Departments started to fight among themselves.

Harry stood once more to protect the voices of the innocent. Not even allowed to finish his education he, Ron and Hermione marched to serve their country. Or at least the nation they had become a part of since they turned eleven. With Ron as his left hand and Hermione as his right hand, Harry concurred the Wizarding World with his head held high and his heart on his sleeve. Between the three of them they revolutionised Britain's Wizarding World. But at the cost of their youth, their health and their privacy. Not that Harry had any to begin with…

He had fought hard to protect his friends, to protect their identity, but in the end they were gobbled up by the nation and left with Fleur who moved her family to France. Harry was left on his own, sacrificing what little life he had left to safe his friends from drowning in the political sea they had been battling against.

Ten years it took him to gain control over everything and for Wizarding Britain to pick itself up and assemble into a workable order. Life had returned to normal for everyone but him. His body was exhausted beyond the point where he couldn't feel his legs and his brain no longer registered that it was a new day. He hadn't been able to sleep and eating became a chore in itself. When his friends finally returned to his side they barely recognised him and guilt kept them from leaving his side. It wasn't until then that his life started to make sense again.

Finally allowed to lead the life he was meant to after the war against Voldemort, Harry spend a year abroad recuperating while Ron and Hermione kept an eye out. They had started a family by that time and their children were growing up to be strong minded and with a fiery temper, fiercely brilliant in a way that would have made Molly Weasley proud had she still been alive. Going abroad turned out to be the worst mistake he could have ever made though.

Fate screwed him over once again and after a freak accident, Harry ended up spending a year in some foreign 'scientific' facility. They spoke of cell mutations and energetic powers through mental waves as they ran tests after tests, not caring that they were preforming them on a British Lord of an Ancient and (partially) Noble family. His name meant nothing to them and his cries even less. Not that he cried for them to stop, or to have mercy on him. Not even Voldemort had been able to make him cry out in anything but pain.

By the time the facility was raided by the local justice department and he was freed from the prison, send home with an apology and compensation for any rehabilitation he might need, Harry was a mess. His magic was drained, constantly working to heal his wounds and sustaining him for as long as it was possible. His legs, which had already been damaged, were unable to keep his body weight and it took him most of his life to regain some of their strength. Harry wondered if it was because five quiet years had passed that something like this was happening to him again. Curse him for saying that things had been too quiet lately. At least he was able to walk again, albeit a little shakily.

The incident which had led him to wander the Scottish Highlands aimlessly had been wiped from his mind, by his own magic or another's. All he remembered were the smells of death and decay and sounds of desperation. The once beautiful landscape was transformed into a black crater, smoking and choking as if the earth itself was trying to cough up the disease which had seeped into its cores. It was this that Harry had heard, this that had awoken him from his shock and horror. The Earth crying out in desperation and pain much like he had done in the laboratory.

A startled human cry, a gunshot which had him gasping for air and before Harry knew it he woke in these dark tunnels. Weak as always, smelling of blood and sweat, trying to find his way towards something which could lead him out of here.

"What's it doing, precious?" a voice hissed, the underlying purr identified as the sound which Harry had been walking towards. The being, because it didn't sound quite human, hissed and coughed and sounded oddly like a sick cat. But at least Harry could understand what it was saying. "Always wandering, always stumbling. Like a poor little lamb its stinking white coat already dirty and grimy. Better to be fish, for it will taste so nice."

Harry froze in his movement, his harsh breathing sounding too loud in his ears for his comfort and his heartbeat hammering in his throat as if it were trying to leap away. For a moment he did not recognise the feelings coursing through him but then he knew… it was fear. Fear for the thing which was sneaking around in the dark.

A screech startled him and he pressed himself closer to the tunnel wall, the rough stone digging its way into wounds he hadn't noticed before.

"It sounds like a bird," the being hissed, seemingly edging closer. "It does, precious, it does! A young little bird fallen from the nest. Will it have broken a wing or its feisty little neck. Not much meat on a little bird though, precious. No, not at all! But oh so juicy."

The last words was hissed so close that Harry stumbled out into the open tunnel, falling flat on his face breaking his nose. He grunted in pain and squeezed his eyes shut before willing his body to turn and stare out into the darkness which surrounded him. Water splashed around him and the soft dripping which had been swallowed up by the purring voice returned with a vengeance. Something hovered above, its luminous eyes reminding him eerily of a house-elf, before Harry felt clammy yet strong fingers grip around his throat.

"Will it taste nice, precious?" the being hissed, its breath smelling of rotting fish. "Will it taste good?" But the being was soon distracted by another screeching sound which seemed to be coming closer. Fighting for a breath as oxygen was sucked back into his longs, Harry kicked the creature away, sending a shock caused by accidental magic through the being. It screeched in pain and fear, jumping back and into the shadows of the caves with a hiss like an angry cat.

Harry let himself drop back onto the hard stone floor, lights flickering as his vision returned and the numbing sensation in his limbs withdrew. As he lay there, listening to the screeching and crawling sounds coming closer, he knew that he would probably regret not moving at all but he was just too tired. Tired of people using and abusing him. Tired of being fate's plaything. He was simply just tired of living all together. So as he lay there in the darkness, basically giving up on life as it was, he closed his mind. He pushed away thoughts which could tempt him into not giving up. Harry let the creatures which roamed this piece of the Earth reach him, sniff at him and paw with their claws at him.

In one instance, one mad dash of fevered survival, Harry resisted. His muscles spurred on the actions of his limbs which seemed to move on their own accord. He whispered words, mad attempts at incantations he knew would no longer work for him. But he tried nonetheless. The creatures fought back of course, getting more excited the more he resisted capture, but they could probably tell that Harry was too tired to fight. So they fixed his ability to kill their kin with a single word.

With a mad glee in their eyes which Harry would remember forever, the creatures cut off his tongue.

…

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

_Where once was light,  
>Now darkness falls.<br>Where once was love,  
>Love is no more.<br>Don't say goodbye,  
>Don't say we didn't try – Gollum's song by Emiliana Torrini<em>

**Chapter 2  
>The Lonesome Years<strong>

He was conscious of his surroundings, though his body remained in a state of deep slumber. It was like his magic - which seemed to be returning to him with each breath he took - was reaching all around him. It encased his body in a protective shell appearing as a thick air bubble in his mind's eye. At first he didn't really remember anything. Not who he was, where he was or how he got there. But the longer he stayed in that state of suspension, the more he started to remember.

The first thing he remembered was the sound of water dripping onto stone. The sound of a rhythm nature provided which seemed to align with his heartbeat. Second to that came the smell of air heavy with minerals, wet stones and darkness. Not the darkness of everlasting dreamless dreams but a comforting darkness which came from being under the earth, inside a mountain. Last there was the feel of cool air rushing in and around him. It ruffled his hair in a comforting gesture like he had seen Ron do to his youngest children. It blew across his naked body, cooling hot fevered skin and infected wounds which continued to bleed. And as Harry breathed in the cool, comforting air he could almost taste the sun which it carried with it.

Something hot and wet rolled down his cheeks and for a moment Harry twisted in his bonds, exhausted muscles protesting as blood were pumped through them again. His eyelids fluttered and something screeched nearby causing the raven head to flinch away. The screeching became loader and as Harry flinched away again something cracked close by. Hot leather worked its way across his back, pain flaming in its wake. A grunt of discomfort left him before darkness of everlasting dreamless dreams took him again.

…

His hair never grew or it would have been past his shoulder blades around about now. The cold air swept through the tunnels signalling winter had come. At least he no longer hung from the disused bellows or he was sure to have grown in length even more. The cool stone spoke comfortingly at him, the rest in between tortures giving him the time he needed to settle his wired thoughts.

Harry had been here two winters now as he had counted by the winter winds which swept through the cold tunnels. He could tell by the smell of fresh snow which settled in his nostrils and froze his insides with ice. The creatures – his captors – always tried to gnaw at his toes, their teeth grating at his nails and skin before they were zapped away by wild magics which still coursed underneath his skin. Magics which had kept him alive in this hellish part of the world.

Songs travelled down the dark and damp, thrilling in the air and almost drowned out by screeching and crying. But now was not the time to listen. Now was not the time to linger. Hot, thick syrup was forced down his throat as gruesome faces with large eyes and sharp teeth loomed across him, suffocating him. Hazed though his world was Harry coughed and hacked, shaking his head against the thick liquid which had been his diet all this time. Hissing and laughing, screeching and chattering the creature pinched his nose and closed his mouth. Harry turned and twisted, pushing weakly with bound hands against the stronger creature. A terrifying second Harry watched his world darken once more, his longs burning in agony as they screamed for oxygen, only to brighten with a flash.

The creature – his captor – screeched something terrible and the light in its eyes diminished, dropping like a stone across Harry's body. The raven head heaved great gulps of winter air into his longs, his eyes burning with unshed tears. Not that he had shed a single one since arriving in tunnels. No any moisture had been saved, held inside his body to keep it from shutting down. Any nutrients received from the thick syrup kept his organs from giving up, everything slowing down to preserve energy for the times ahead. Harry wondered why his body refused to give up, why it wouldn't just wither away and die. Had he not suffered enough?

Something sang out to him, calling to him in the dark of the tunnels. The earth hummed lovingly, its magic refuelling his own like it had not been able to do before. Water dripping down the mineshafts, abandoned ropes and tools creaking and groaning in the wind calling out to him. In his lonesome hours of rest while his captors slept and creeped and ate Harry hummed back to them, calling to their inner magics as to ease his lonely nights.

Now that two years had passed and winter had come again Harry felt the magics stir, a heat calling out of the darkest pits down below. His magic sang as a sound like thunder echoed through the mineshafts. It was time to go, to continue living away from the tunnels. If he could follow the winter winds – it would take him days to get up anywhere but at least he would try – and if he could find anything that would keep his magic happy, his body healthy, perhaps than he could finally find rest.

Harry pushed at the heavy creature, rolled out from under it to relieve him of his load. For a moment the raven head stared at the creature in disorientation, his woolly brain beyond exhausted by the simple exercise. He smelled the air but no, he could no longer taste anything. The staleness of the air only helped him to identify that there were more creatures close by but now how many or where. With dull green eyes Harry looked at the creature he had just killed. Shocked wide eyes, his yellow pointy teeth bared in an expression of shock and his long fingers spread out wide, the leather skinned flask dropped beside him leaking the thick dark liquid onto the hard stone floor. His armour kept of oily green skin by thin strips of brown cloth it was unlike anything Harry had ever seen before. Of course the creature had been like anything Harry had ever seen before as well but he paid it no mind. Wasting energy on questions he had no way of answering was a stupid move indeed.

And so Harry moved to look for some kind of weapon before taking a long drink from the syrup. It seemed foolish to anyone else but to the raven head it was a source of food and without any other options available to him Harry wasn't one to leave it behind. His body was shaking from the cold and exercise, fever sweat glistening in the dull light of the caves and as he carefully wandered outside he knew it was going to be a long journey.

…

It took him days, weeks, months; Harry wasn't sure how long it took him exactly to get to the higher levels. He wasn't even sure how he did it without alerting his former captors. All the raven head knew was that the quality of the air had improved, fresher and cooler the winter air was as welcoming here as if had been in the Scottish Highlands. It brought with it whispers and excited cries much different than the screeching and crying which had surrounded him for years. The sounds stirred something inside of Harry that he hadn't felt in an age. Hope that life survived.

He glimpsed metal, silver, which shone in torchlight that flickered across the stone walls. There was excited murmuring, soft tapping of metal against stone and the scratching of something heavy being dragged across the tunnel flooring. Even if the sounds could have installed fear into others to Harry it felt comforting. They weren't the sounds of the creatures that had taken over these mines.

They were stocky men with large beard and a lot more hair, all delicately woven in braids and metal beads. Their armour appeared heavy, cloths richly decorated and not a plain bit of metal in sight. They were speaking excitedly in a tongue Harry had never heard of before. It was a deep rumble, like rock breaking away from a mountain, and it had pleasant warmth of roaring fires and strong ale. A longing filled him for a moment. A longing to learn and speak, to be a part of that warmth which reminded him of rainy days while staying inside in the Gryffindor common room.

Metal gleamed menacingly in his face and he looked down to see one of the stocky men standing in front of him, his axe close to Harry's face. "Who are you and what is your business here?" the man growled, his dialect dark and deep sending a shiver down the raven head's spine. Slowly raising his hands in a sign of surrender Harry shook his head and opened his mouth to show his missing muscle. The man squinted at him for a while before slowly lowering his axe. "It seems you had found yourself in a bit of trouble, son of man. Come with me, I will take you to see the Dwarven King."

Unsure of whether or not this was a good thing Harry followed the Dwarf with an excited curiosity stirring in his stomach which he hadn't felt in an age. It was sure to be fun.

Balin, King of the Moria Dwarven colony, was a very old and jolly Dwarf who took great delight in helping Harry getting back on his feet. Their small party nurtured the raven head as if he were one of their children, feeding him bread, butter and dried meat until he was full ten times over. They told him stories of the many adventures they had in Middle Earth. Of great battles between the Dwarven Kingdoms and the orcs of Mordor. They told him of the Valar and their infinite wisdom, of how they had created the world and its children and of the fallen Maiar who had crafted rings of power for all the great kingdoms of Middle Earth. It was why they were here; to search for one of the lost rings the Dwarven Kingdom had been granted. They taught Harry how to listen to the mines, the rocks and metals. They taught him a little of Dwarven magics, how to work metal and mineral to create tools that would never break. And they also taught him how to speak without his tongue, how to fake sounds that would become words by manipulating glass and metal.

And so a year passed of companionship, of telling stories and fighting orcs. It wasn't until Balin was slain that Harry realised just how much he had learned from them, how he had come to love them as if they were his own family. How he would miss them should they ever be taken from him. Now it was too late as drums of war and anguish resounded through the tunnels. They had awakened Durin's Bane and it was coming for them. Harry was a wizard though and he would be damned if he let him family dying on him. So he began to tap into the magic which had been growing and growing this past year.

His companions pulled at his clothing and begged him to move, to protect himself so at least the child they had nurtured and watched grow would at least survive. But Harry remained in his trance, letting his magic use him as his mouth formed enchantments which no one would ever hear. He did not hear his companions take up arms - for no Dwarf ever ran from a fight – and he did not see them being slain one by one in order to protect the child they had come to care for. So when Harry finally finished his enchantment, freezing his body as to protect those close to his heart, he was the only one left to be encased by it. It took out several of the orcs and badly wounded the Balrog but it did nothing to ease the wounds which had formed with every Dwarf taken.

And so Harry remained by Balin's tomb, resting and alone until another Dwarf would awaken him and would take him under his or her wing once more.

**TBC**

…

**A/N: and there we are again. I know I am jumping scenes an awful lot but it is simply to save time and get to the point. It's also why the chapters are so short. I'm still experimenting with writing in this style so I might come back when I've finished and re-write the whole thing once I'm comfortable. Anyway I hope you all had a better start at the New Year than myself. I shouldn't really complain but I still feel like I left half my brain behind in 2014.**


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